.the quiet eye

I had a pretty big year-at least for me. It was a nice gradual process and most of the time I felt as if I was holding my busy-ness at arm’s length so as to not get overwhelmed. I have discovered that I work better at a slower pace, acknowledging the time to take in and experience my process. I do this in my relationships with everything-my kids, my husband, my friends, commissioned projects, my personal work. I need that time to do my most honest work. I take longer than most people take to ease into daily demands. Thus I know that I need to pace myself in all aspects of my life if I am going to juggle everything I love to do.

I am personally surprised by the number of images I created this year that had a huge impact on changing the way I see. Each one of these images I made in 2012 and each one had some special quality that caused me to see differently-whether it was how I felt in the moment, how I felt after I took the image or even what I saw after I edited through the images at home-I experienced a sort of ‘aha!’ moment from each one that has influenced how I photograph and think about my photography now.

I have discovered that most of them were effortless. The less I thought about them and the less I tried to do something extraordinary while making the image, the more connected I felt to the photographs. They came more from intuition and sensibility than a plan I had.

The most rewarding discovery is that I wrote in my goals at the Soul Shooting workshop that I wanted to apply my personal artistic vision to commercial work and I have done just that several times this year. The commercial and creative environment overlaps in a very rare sweet spot. An amazing Creative Director at DGWB who loves my work for the way it is gave me the opportunity to manifest this dream and he introduced me to wonderful clients who appreciate my work. This is one of the biggest challenges I’ve had over 25 years as a photographer.

I have also begun to explore my personal work in depth and how to communicate as a fine art photographer. I definitely don’t have demons or the personal challenges to draw from for really intense work but I am so thrilled to finally be on a path of making intentional images that come from a place that is me in a way that others can appreciate and draw on for their own ideas about the creative process. Thanks to my very dear friend Cindy Schafer who introduced me to Aline Smithson, I feel like the door that I have been searching for has finally presented itself and is beginning to open.

I feel so blessed and honored to have been given the chance to create images for others in so many different facets. My work covers a broad spectrum of commissioned projects and is quite diverse and for this I am proud and overjoyed. It is definitely a part of my personal style that can’t be changed. I’ve never been one to repeat the same thing over and over again.

Many years ago my cousin Dori gave me a book titled The Quiet Eye-A Way Of Looking At Pictures. It is a collection of quotes compiled by Sylvia Shaw Judson paired with artwork. To this day, the quotes and images in this little gem have had a tremendous impact on how I see and experience art and life.

One of my favorite quotes from the book is a Chinese saying: “The sound stops short, the sense flows on.” This is what I feel like my favorite photographs say.

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2 Comments

amy grace

January 7, 2013

the beauty and depth and quality of your work speaks of a journey. years and experience have gone into your talent for creating an amazing aesthetic in your images. i can see that. but i can hear things too, and feel them, and smell them and become enveloped by the spirit, the soul of them. i wholly believe in intuition, kristianne. i believe that the most profound moments of our lives are when we let the rest of the voices fall away. the strongest gifts are the most simple. the elegance of your voice blows me away. you are among a tiny pool of my favorite artists. amazing.

Dawn Shiree

January 7, 2013

I have no doubt that as long as you are publishing your work online I will be following your journey, dear SS friend. Our worlds, our lives, our perspectives, our lifestyles look nothing alike. And yet as a photographer I feel amazingly connected to someone who by total serendipity I have had the good fortune to meet and to be immeasurably inspired by. You are a true artist. You are a wonderful photographer. And every frame you share is literally saturated in beauty. There is a mystery about your work that is all your own. It’s simply divine. xo